Saturday, March 27, 2010

Truck Series Back At The Perfect Track

Here come the trucks again and this time the racing will be more about beating and banging than aero push and drafting. Saturday afternoon, the Camping World Trucks will be running at the bullring in Martinsville, VA. The ultimate payback track.

Krista Voda starts the coverage at 1:30PM with The Setup. Pit reporters Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander provide the interviews. There are some new faces, some Cup Series cross-over drivers and several good storylines unfolding in this series.

Rick Allen comes along at 2PM to call the race. As usual, he will have Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip alongside. It's been an interesting couple of weeks for these two gentlemen, especially where their shared Sprint Cup Series ownership interests are concerned. Waltrip even started and parked one of Parsons' Cup cars in Bristol last week.

Waltrip suggests that spending the weekend with the Parsons crew allowed him to prepare better for Talladega, where he will be racing Parsons' car for the entire event. Money is doing a lot of talking in the sport where these two are concerned.

The trucks need a solid show of good racing to get the series back into the TV highlights and return it to the popularity of 2009. The CWTS schedule for this season leaves a lot to be desired during this early stretch.

The familiar CWTS production team from SPEED is handling this event. That should result in some old school NASCAR TV and get away from what FOX has been offering. Following the leader and overusing in-car cameras has made the Cup Series tough to watch at times this year. SPEED follows the stories, shows the racing and lets the pit reporters provide a lot of information.

Rain washed out much of Friday's activity, including the CWTS qualifying. We will provide updates on this post and on Twitter about the weather during the morning hours. Larry McReynolds, amateur meteorologist, said the rain would clear out well before the truck race.

The big twist on Saturday is the low-key introduction of TruckBuddy. The folks at Turner Interactive, through the NASCAR.com website, are offering the CWTS version of RaceBuddy. Click here for the direct link to the page.

Although slightly smaller and with a few less features, having an online application like this for the race is a big step in the right direction. Letting fans get involved in picking video streams and choosing cameras while watching the race on SPEED is the wave of the future.

Hopefully, the success of this TruckBuddy experiment may lead to the application being sponsored and rolled-out again this season. Dodge is using the Ram brand to pay the bill and let users have TruckBuddy for free on Saturday. Nice move.

Let's use this post to get your comments before, during and after the CWTS race from Martinsville. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks!

one of the best parts of race weekends has been watching the trucks broadcasts and today will be no different! because the broadcasts are generally strong, i find that i don't multitask: i just watch the tv and enjoy the broadcast. so, i'll be WATCHING the race and will likely keep on eye on truckbuddy, TDP and twitter -- not b/c those sources will be the only way to get info but b/c i enjoy the interactions!

@Joe Dunn - No Fox is a good thing, but there is a downside to next weekend's coverage. It looks like ESPN and Speed are giving us no practice or qualifying coverage, just the races. I'd take tape-delayed coverage over no coverage at all, so this is like taking us back to the '80s when all the information you got was as you sat in front of the TV 30 minutes before the green flag.

LOVE the Trucks!! Here's the funny part: I will have RaceBuddy & other internet apps only, tethered to my laptop wifi. Expect quite a bit of rubbernecking from people around me. DVRing the TV race for later. Ain't the internet great?!

JD,Based on the pic, is Krista Voda a Northern Iowa alum (I remember reading somewhere she's from Iowa)? Or just a fan?Bummer they lost to Michigan State, but I'm happy because several of my relatives are MSU alums.

Just turned on Speed. 12:25pm to check Nascar out. Heard DW's voice. Turned the tv off. Back outside. Can't watch the truck race due to MW. When will these over ego type folks go away so I can enjoy Nascar again with real broadcasters and not ex-drivers with an inflated self worth? Cause, I'm done with both the them.

If you put your mouse over the screen where you can see the four pictures, a bar comes up that lets you go full screen. To the right of that is the speaker icon, move your mouse on that and you can turn the volume up.

boyd: no problem at all. i was watching truck buddy to be certain. besides, i think we're all getting use to reading the same info from multiple sources as a result of twitter!karen: thanks for the vote of confidence!

so now i have TWO truck buddy windows up: one to listen to hornaday and team and one to watch all 4 shots. i have the audio window minimized so i can hear what's being said and other maximized so i can watch while listening. (hornaday's not happy w/the3 truck short-pitting: "tell the 3 i'm gonna knock him off his stand if he does that again.")

gotta admit: this is fun.

AND the tv is doing a mighty fine job as well. what a wonderful broadcast!

karen, best part is that the visuals from tv are strong so i can mute the booth if i want to and just listen to hornaday while i play around w/truckbuddy. it's great to have the confidence in the tv truck team to know that i can look up at any time & get a great camera shot on tv!

I notice when it comes to the Nationwide races & Truck races, that the announcers give the benefit of the doubt to the teams connected with Cup. Like there, Michael said Ricky should've given Austin more room.

i'm liking that the camera stayed with that battle for position until hornaday got it and didn't bounce thru multiple cameras! it's solid work to give the moment the time it requires to resolve and THEN move on.

before anyone hollers about camera work at the finish:they showed the first 4 finishers cross the line then switched to the BATTLE for fifth, watched that hit the line then went back to the wide shot for the rest of the finishers.

ESPN needs to come off some of their bucks and get RB. What an exciting race. Know that lots of it was CWTS but the announce team was good, truck excellent. Would bring so much needed excitement back to NASCAR. Thanks to Dodge. Going to their FB page to thank them.

Watching some of the chat on Truck Race Buddy I noticed a few people had never watched the truck race before.Truck Race Buddy not only made for more free viewing options, it also brought in new fans to see the truck race.